Gripped By Upgrade Fever

I’m sure that 99 percent of the people reading this have suffered from the same syndrome before. So please show some empathy.

I’m two months into my ownership of KEF LS50s. Only a fool would be in a hurry to replace those speakers. I am that fool. It’s just that now that I’ve had a taste of what’s possible . . .


This is a long term plan. First, of course, is a new apartment so that a decent listening position is possible. Next, I spend about $5,000 on speakers and I make the big jump from bookshelves to floorstanders. Because this is all so hypothetical, I won’t mention any specific models and I’m not looking for advice on that point. Instead, let me start somewhere more basic.

A lot of of tower speakers, even the relatively small ones you get for 5K, cram a flotilla of drivers into the available space. Not unusual at all to see a tweeter, two mids, and three woofers. Not hard to find more. Right now, with the LS50, I’m looking at a single apparent source that’s five inches wide. All these drivers look like trouble to me. More crossovers, more timing issues, more phase issues, more I-don’t-know-what.


Is this fear rational? Am I crazy? I notice that at the 5K price point, KEF only uses 2.5 drivers—one Uni-Q and one woofer. Everything else is a passive radiator. While I don’t know what passive radiators actually do, I know that they are not independent sources of sound, that they are somehow just passing along energy from the woofer. Lots of other companies—Tannoy and Zu among them—claim virtues from one or two drivers that cover the entire audio spectrum or at least a big chunk of it, arguing that the simpler approach avoids the problems inherent in having lots of drivers trying to do the same thing.


For some reason, without any listening experience or technical knowledge, that argument appeals to me. Is my fear justified? Are speaker makers beyond such paltry concerns? Thoughts/comments/criticism?